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Pork Soup

A soup made with pork, soup stock, beans, hard bread, and flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Pork and beans are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,000 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Pork Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the pork

  1. Start a fire and thoroughly boil the pork.

  2. Let the pork cool for use the next day.

Make the soup

  1. Make soup by adding soup stock and boiling.

  2. If bones are available, boil them to create a lasting soup stock.

Prepare the beans

  1. Prepare beans by cooking them overnight.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Pork + beanstop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,000 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  2. Beans + flourtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,080 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Pork + breadtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,371 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).

  4. Beans + breadtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together332 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Bread + flourtop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together10,383 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Bread and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 10,383 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Pork
Supplies the main meat and savory flavor of the soup.
Soup stock
Forms the liquid base that carries the flavor of the soup.
Beans
Cooking overnight softens them so they become tender in the soup.

The step that matters

Boil the pork thoroughly. Pork must be fully cooked through before it cools and is kept for the next day. Thorough heating brings the meat to a safe internal temperature and reduces the risk of foodborne illness.

Swap the beans

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pork, bread, flour):

  1. Chestnutfits better
  2. Beansthe original
  3. Lentilsfits about as well
  4. Almondfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against pork, bread, flour. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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